Two Witches: Witches Without a Cause
By John Kirk
Rating: C-
With Halloween around the corner, the witching season is upon us. However, in the case of Two Witches, it might be best to wait for a film where the witches seem to actually know what they’re doing.
In this debut film from Pierre Tsigaridis, we meet expectant mother Sarah (Belle Adams) and her ignorant partner, Simon (Ian Michaels) who are stared down by seemingly mean-spirited yet anonymous elderly lady for some unknown reason.
Later on, Sarah sees the old woman appear multiple times (providing multiple jump scares) and somehow arrives at the conclusion that she is a witch and has cursed her with “the evil eye.”
This is actually my first of many issues with this film. I love a good horror story but there’s no correlation between why Sarah has been targeted by this witchy old bird. Was she related to her or is her home on the burial ground of murdered witches? There’s no attributable reason why this young woman has been targeted.
The story anticipation for this film is sorely lacking. With Sarah’s pregnancy, I perhaps went with the idea that perhaps Sarah’s baby had been chosen for sacrifice because of all sorts astrological or eldritch reasons why.
I was anticipating some great background story about how every 50 years the witches of this town chose one newborn to be sacrificed for the good of the townsfolk or even that the child would be a vessel for the return of some ancient witch’s spirit to be reborn. Heck, I was even looking for a Rosemary’s Baby angle.
Sadly, not. It seems that this witch is apparently just a bitch who terrorizes her victims with close-up shots of her eating.
The situation is made worse with Sarah’s partner, Simon, who seems oblivious to not only Sarah’s fears but even her pregnancy with, presumably, his child. It’s very easy to dislike Simon and while that seems to have been on purpose to perhaps reinforce Sarah’s isolation and helplessness, it also makes it impossible to develop any sort of sympathy for him.
To make the storyline even more confusing, when Simon and Sarah visit their friends Dustin and Melissa (Tim Fox and Dina Silva), Melissa reveals that she is a professional versed in the matters of the occult. They try to identify the negative energy that haunts Sarah yet after a few minutes of fruitless attempts, they give up, leaving them prey to the witch’s wiles.
The other striking feature of this film is its structure. At its midpoint, it roughly changes gears and switches to another story about a strange young woman, Massha (Rebekah Kennedy) and her roommate, Rachel (Kristina Klebe).
Massha is clearly manipulative, alone, and envious of her kind-hearted roommate who seems to have things that Massha covets. We first meet her having sex with an anonymous man (cast as “Guy Who Has Sex”). She also relates to Rachel that she is a granddaughter to a witch who is dying and will receive her grandmother’s powers when she dies. Massha also begins to incorporate part of Rachel’s life-history into her own, prompting a lackluster confrontation between the two when Rachel essentially lets her off with a warning.
At this point in the story, despite the seeming lack of connection to the first part of the film, one could think there might be a Single White Female vibe happening here.
However, the audience is also disappointed with a lack of detail in the script that fails to account for how Massha winds up at a party Rachel was supposed to be at. It’s here when she encounters Dustin and Melissa from the first half of the film, in a vague attempt to connect the two parts of the story.
It’s difficult to attach any sense of empathy with any of the characters in this film. They either lack definition or their motivation is obscured by whatever is the cause for the witches being there in the first place.
On a positive note, there is a great soundtrack that accompanies this film and the series of jump-scares, while perhaps too heavily relied-upon as a scare tactic, do manage to provide brief moments of shock. However, while these are episodic, they fail to contribute to a sustainable mood of fear, which should be a hallmark of a well-structured horror story.
Two Witches was released October 1 so thankfully there are 29 other days remaining before Halloween to find a tale that can truly terrorize this month.
Two Witches. Directed by Pierre Tsigaridis. Starring Rebekah Kennedy, Kristina Klebe, Belle Adams, and Tim Fox. Now available in the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland on the following Apps/devices: Roku (all Roku sticks, boxes, devices, etc), Apple TV & iOS devices, Samsung TVs, Android TV and mobile devices, Fire TV (all Amazon Fire TV Sticks, boxes, etc), and on all web browsers at https://www.arrow-player.com.